A COMMUNITY CREATED Hack'n Slash RPG where players can team up and tackle exciting adventures made by other community members in our in-game Adventure Construction Kit - It's DIABLO meets LITTLE BIG PLANET!

Now anytime in the ACK, during your editing session, you can press CTRL+S to quick save any previously saved adventure. This will also work when using a Controller.

New RECENT PLAYS filter in the Adventure Gallery - World Map Mode

We now track the last 50 adventures you have played offline or as the host when online and we have added a new filter to the Adventure Gallery World Map view called RECENTLY PLAYED that will show you those adventures in order of most recent to oldest.

1.0.8 (Build 7.4) Change List

New

Added ability to reposition Adventures and Campaigns on the World Map

Added a new “Recent Plays” category in the Adventure Gallery - displays recently played adventures

ACK: Added new Dark, Brown and Swamp water options

ACK: Added new props (see above)

ACK: Added quick save option in ACK - press Ctrl-S at any time to save your current adventure

March 16

Version 1.0.7 contains some pretty big game changes, including some things that our community have been asking for for a while, so we think you are all going to be super excited with this update!

New Gameplay Difficulty Settings

One of the things we hear a lot from the community is that for some players, adventures are too easy and for others the same adventure is too hard, so we have implemented a difficulty system where players can choose to make the game harder for more XP rewards, or make the game easier for less XP.

You can change your settings on your World Map by pressing SPACE when using Mouse or LB when using Controller.

Settings that can currently be changed are:

Number of starting extra lives per character (0 - 4) default stays at 2 like it is now

Number of lives awarded from a checkpoint (0 - 2) default stays at 1 like now

Amount of HP a checkpoint has to heal you (0 , 150, 300) default stays at 150 like now

The difficulty settings are persistent and you can alter them whenever you want. They also sync over a network game, so all players play the hosts difficulty settings, and they see what they are in the Adventure and Campaign loading screens.

We also turn them off in the ACK for play testing so creators can’t accidentally play an adventure is an easier mode and then mark it as easy.

Playing Reward Adventures stack the rewards on top of the difficulty settings :-)

In order to ensure you feel in control when in combat, we’ve implemented attack cancelling - simply Block or Dodge Roll at any time to cancel your current attack. Cancelling an attack with a block will cost you the same amount of Stamina as a dodge and will work regardless of whether you have a shield equipped.

You cannot use attack cancelling during special attacks.

Re-designed Enemy UI in ACK + New features!

We’ve spent some time making the Enemy UI int the ACK less cluttered by separating out like items into new tabbed panels. We’ve also added a BUNCH of new stuff too like:

Can now mark enemies to NOT have Mutators assigned (up to 5)

You can now adjust the scale of some enemies

Some enemies now have random colour tint selection

You can override these colour tints per enemy - want a purple orc? Go for it!

You can not set the types of items an enemy can drop when killed (Loot & Potions, just Loot, just Potions or nothing).

Loot Drop re-balance & Gold value scaling

We have finally gotten around to to re-implementing loot drops to ensure a much more even distribution of loot for players to ensure we don't get the "I've had 100 loot drops and I only get boots!" scenario ;)

Loot will drop evenly, weighted to the character class, and if it is a split-screen game, then the loot drop will be balanced to the player that opens a chest, or scores the kill on an enemy.

We have also spent some time to make gold rewards scale better as your characters level up.

New SNAKE Enemy

We’ve added a new Snake enemy to the ACK for you all to use in your adventures - it will slither after and bite any adventurers it can. Each attack will do an initial amount of damage, as well as poison the player for two seconds for additional damage.

New Invisible NPC

We’ve seen some pretty cool workarounds to make various inanimate objects have Dialogue, so we thought we’d try and make it a bit easier to add dialogue to whatever object you want - the Invisible NPC!

You can place and edit an invisible NPC just like any other NPC, although you’ll notice the Invisible NPC has a small pink box suspended in the air - this is the interaction point. When you add dialogue to the NPC, the speech bubble will come from this point. To give you full control, you can also raise and lower the interaction point like any prop, so you can customise where the dialogue sits on your screen.

We’ve finally shipped a version of our in-game moderator tools to make life easier for our awesome community moderators. The main aim here is to make adventure moderation quicker, allowing for reports to be cleared quicker, and blockable adventures to be blocked quicker.

These tools help reduce the burden placed on us (the devs) and put the power in the hands of our awesome community.

1.0.7 (Build 7.0) Change List

New

Added a new DIfficulty System for customising play experience (see above)

Added new Snake enemy

ACK: Can now adjust scale and colour of many enemies

ACK: Can now mark an enemy to not receive a mutator (max of 5 per adventure)

ACK: Can now adjust whether an enemy drops just Loot, just Potions, both, or nothing

ACK: Added a new invisible NPC type (see above)

Changes/Improvements

Can now cancel attacks by blocking or dodge-rolling. Cancelling via a block costs 30 Stamina

Rebalanced loot distribution to be more balanced when selecting what type of item to drop

Gold drops now scale as you level up

Spiders will now stop shooting web once their target has been successfully “webbed”

Improved accuracy of first axe attack

Workshop item package and submit button now changes to “Update Package” when item has already been published before

Improved teleporter physics reliability when large groups of enemies move through teleporters

Small mushrooms no longer have colliders, so players can move through them

ACK: Logic Block delay timers can now go up to 20 minutes

ACK: Redesigned Enemy inspector to accommodate new features and break up controls into a smaller bit of UI

ACK: Saving an adventure now sets that adventure as the “Quick Load” adventure

ACK: Made pressure plates rotatable!

Fixes

Fixed Male and Female Black Rogue intro sound effects being switched

Fixed a physics quirk when standing on top of a book with a bridge on it

Fixed Tomes carrying their charge between adventures

Fixed character snapping towards mouse when attacking with keyboard (Enter by default)

Fixed not being able to delete character in character select panel with second controller

Fixed some lamps using an incorrect shader (they had a slight glow effect)

Fixed potential issue with saving & loading created Workshop items

Fixed on-screen controller help displaying to the left of center when looking at map in split-screen

Potentially fixed a lockup when pausing the game at the exact same time as the game ends

Fixed tutorial prompts in first two adventures not displaying correctly

Players can play single player, local split-screen couch co-op (2 players) or online multiplayer (4 players) to complete 10-15 minute adventures in a non-linear order, which allows players to jump in for a quick fix or play multiple adventures over longer play sessions. Collect loot, level up, conquer enemies and become a master adventurer!

Become the ultimate Dungeon Master you always dreamed of being!

Fight The Dragon ships with a highly flexible in-game Adventure Construction Kit (ACK) that allows players to design, play and share their own adventures with other players on all platforms around the world.

The ACK (as is the gameplay) is designed to be as intuitive to use via a gamepad as it is via mouse and keyboard. Creators are able to sculpt and paint environments, place props, enemies, NPCs, Traps, checkpoints and other key game elements including hooking up basic logic systems for switches/gates and traps.

The Fight The Dragon community have already published over 1600 fantastic adventures, which means we have hundreds of hours of gameplay already created.

Dragon Battle Arena

As heroes complete adventures and reach milestones, they earn tickets that allow them to go “Fight The Dragon” in the ultimate dragon battle arena.

Every player has their own dragon to fight, and each dragon has MEGA HP, so killing your dragon will require many encounters and a lot of skill. The damage you do to your dragon is persistent between play sessions, so collect as many tickets as you can and go battle it out! Each ticket grants the player 3 lives, but be warned, there are more ways to die in the dragon arena than just the dragon, so stay alert!

I'm long overdue to post a review for this game. Why have I waited so long? Because I've been having so much fun playing and creating, I hardly use my spare time for anything else! I think it's an outstanding, highly entertaining game! The community-generated "adventures" make this game virtually unlimited in it's original gameplay content.

I should also add that I'm new to both the Hack & Slash and RPG genres...they just never appealed to me before. I bought this game because I think the devs are fantastic, having played both Cubemen and Cubemen 2, but I wasn't sure I would care for it that much. Boy, was I wrong to even think that! Now, I'm completely hooked and having a great time playing, interacting with the community in sharing/playing adventures, and in creating my own. The built in Adventure Construction Kit (ACK) is quite sophisticated yet easy to use. You can be building and publishing great-looking adventures in a fairly short amount of time.

So whether you're a seasoned pro in Hack n Slash and RPG games, or new to the genre as I was, I'm confident you're going to enjoy this game. If the current "Early Access" state is a concern for you, don't let it be. I would consider this a complete game...that just keeps getting better with each update, as cool new features are added on a regular basis.

Now it's time to go back and conquer more "worlds" as I add to the already 450+ hours I've got in this game! That in itself should tell you quite a bit about how I feel about Fight the Dragon.

As dev of McDroid I can tell you that was they achieved here is amazing: integrating user generated levels into the game in such a seamless way, with well done facilities to thumb up and down, comment levels and make your own levels and publishing. I never made my own level in such a well designed tool and it was a blast. Seeing the number of people playing is addictive, akin to facebooking. The great thing about UG levels is the spectrum of game style is vast: from arcade to intricate RPG stories with fantastic ramp up in difficulty. The amount of level is enormous, the quality varies.

The main game loop is: hack, pick up worthy loot, sell the least valuable to get extra goodies, level up.On top of that you attack a Dragon with a ginormous amount of HP, when you die, and you will die very often, you get kicked out of the arena and go back to the main game of leveling up, the HP is kept where it was.

Fight The Dragon is a simple, community-driven dungeon crawler for up to 4 players, populated with maps designed by the players themselves. There are twelve customizable character slots, and four classes to choose from, each with different weapon proficiencies and four unique abilities: the fighter, the rogue, the ice wizard, and the pyromancer. If you've played a fantasy-themed game before, those classes shouldn't be unfamiliar. The playstyles are all a tad different, but early on, it becomes quite apparent that ranged combatants are considerably easier to play, and arguably more effective as well.

The look of the game is a bit classic. It isn't voxel, and it has smooth textures, but the shapes of the in-game models look quite crude in a few cases. Controls are fairly simple, and the mechanics of the game will come naturally to anyone who is familiar with the genre. The gameplay itself is smooth, if a tad unbalanced; it's rather easy for a map designer to make an area too difficult, whether intentionally or not, by saturating it heavily with certain, more powerful monsters. A good example is a trio of enemy pyromancers- they deal so much damage in such a short time that they will instantly kill you with fireballs and pillars of flame if you stand still for more than a thoughtful moment. Loot appears rather frequently, so it isn't too difficult to find a decent set of gear that compliments how you choose to play. A feature called the 'Loot Shrine' acts as an alternative to the typical store you'd find in the 'safe zone' of a dungeon-crawling RPG. Rather than buying and selling items, the game allows you to 'donate' all of your gold and unwanted gear for a chance at progressively better loot- the more you donate, the better the rewards, which come in the form of rare armor and weapons, extra stat points, increased inventory space, or other miscellaneous character upgrades. Although the game offers you three choices (typically one item and two 'other'), the choices are completely randomized, so you may end up finding some unattractive offers when you decide to cash out. I find this feature to be a refreshing change from the norm, and i've abused it quite a lot in my own time playing.

The gimmicks that make FtD stand out from similar titles are it's trademark Adventure Creation Kit, and the titled battle against the Dragon. The Adventure Creation Kit(ACK) allows a player to construct a dungeon, then play in it against his own creation, or upload it to the server to share with friends or the community as a whole. The ACK is very user-friendly, and it's fun to play with. The design options that it gives you allow you to make maps of all sizes, or even chain multiple dungeons together to create a full campaign with multiple levels. The designer truly allows for an impressive amount of customization and creativity.Fighting the Dragon, as many would assume from the title, is an integral part of the game. At any time, provided your character has recieved a Dragon Scroll by completing a dungeon, you may challenge the dragon arena. The Dragon itself is extremely strong; with a massive, constant HP pool and tons of damage output, he's an extremely tough opponent, only killable with determination and lots of patience (and Dragon Scrolls). Each scroll you use gives you three lives to deal as much damage as possible to the Dragon, before inevitably getting massacred and sent packing back into the player-made dungeons. Fortunately, the Dragon's health bar is consistent through attempts, so the damage you deal in each battle will carry over to the next time. Each time you reach a certain point of progress(by consistently putting tiny dents in his health), you will get a shiny red piece of Dragon loot that has a very special effect, but will disappear after you've used it for a certain time. I find that these two features really do make the game a special one, and it allows the player to take a much-needed break from the constant loot grind.

Overall, the game is put together well, and only suffers from a few minor bugs and glitches. The biggest issue I have with the game is a lack of balance and character development; aside from getting a new ability at level 5, 10, 15, etc., your gear makes your character what it is, and there is very little variance between two characters of the same class. Ranged weapons and kiting tactics seem to be the way to go most of the time, especially when the difficulty ramps up so quickly in most cases. The enemies deal a legitimately high amount of damage per attack, and some fights can cost the players a few lives before they can get a grasp on the situation. Aside from those few complaints, however, this is a gem of a game, would recommend to fans of the genre and RPGs in general.

Appearance: 3.5/5, basic textures, mostly attractive, sounds get repetitive and could have more variety.Controls: 4.5/5, easy to pick up and play, mechanics aren't too hard, everything works how it should.Gameplay: 4/5, bugs are few and far between, the ACK is fun, character building could use more options.Replayability: 4/5, the ACK keeps the game fresh, but enemies get a bit repetitive.Overall: 4/5, a good, solid dungeon crawler with some fun gimmicks and extra tools to make the game unique.

Great game, great premise, but one very huge flaw in its design. The game is based around player created adventures but lacks a fair implementation of advertising any new adventures.

Searching for adventures at first glaces seems to be very complex but after a while you you notice a poor design choice. Only the top 24 adventures will ever be displayed in a search, no matter how many tags you select. What does this mean? Only adventures with a high rating will ever be visible to other players to play, meaning, your new maps will never get a chance to be played unless someone searches for it by name. You can search for Easy, Medium, Hard, or Extreme adventures, but you will never see any adventures that are 25th+ place. Yeah there is a search for newly created adventures, but that category only shows adventures that haven't been played once. Once someone plays it, your adventure is now unsearchable. There is a category for weekly, monthly, and featured adventures but those will always display the same 24 adventures in the category, most of which are the same adventures. Since I have been playing, no new maps were added to featured (about 2 months). There is an option to play a random adventure, but that only selects an adventure you haven't played yet in one of the top 24 adventure categories, only playing a truly random map after those have been exhausted.

Fight the Dragon is a user-generated action RPG, which can be good or bad based on the community involved in making the content. If you're looking for good content, I recommend NOT looking at the highest rated content because they happen to be the most bland and generic of them all. It makes me wonder how exactly they became the top rated in the first place, while unique and creative maps go completely unnoticed. This is because of how the game streamlines new content; it does it very poorly. There is a "new content" tab but its clearly filled with "not new content" because of the amount of ratings each map has, as if they haven't updated the new content tab since alpha. You just have to hope that your map falls under the "local unplayed map" pool that seems to be randomly generated for each user, since that is the actual "new content" tab, but this tab seems to only have like 5-7 maps at a time. I published my map yesterday, and as of right now, only one person other than me has played it. This game prides itself for over-saturation of content, when in reality, it's the main downfall of this game. You really have to sift through a lot of crap to find a few gems, or just give up and make your own gems that only you will end up playing anyway.

Which brings me to why im recommending this game: The level editor.If you like creating your own levels, but are completely stupid and impatient when it comes to using editors (like me), then I highly recommend this game, because not only is the editor extremely easy to use, its also very intricate. You can do practically anything with this level editor. Every interactable item or prop you can place has its own programmable event tab, which you can use to trigger events throughout your level. Events such as "When this monster dies, break down breakable wall" or "When player opens this chest, close X doors and spawn Y monsters in vicinity". There are so many things you can do with this level editor, that you will spend so many hours messing with it and thinking of creative ways to use it. The only problem I have with it is that there's not a huge selection of props, textures, and enemies.

Now you may be saying to yourself "That's great and all, but hows the gameplay?"Well, the combat is a bit clunky and needs improvement... But LOOK AT HOW SHINY THIS LEVEL EDITOR IS!

In all seriousness though, if you like to create your own levels, but don't have the knowledge or patience to use a professional editor, then it is well worth the money. The game itself ain't half bad either, if you can deal with a few bad eggs.

Fantastic game. Been looking for something like this for a long time. It's a hack and slash, but you can also go (ice or fire) mage or rogue (range or daggers). Maps are made by users and are of very good quality usually. There's a rating system, so it should get better over time.

When you have played enough dungeons, collected good gear and leveled up enough you can face the dragon which is kind of the end game. But the dungeons are a lot of fun, so I don't really care too much about that dragon xD

Compared to other dungeon crawlers rpg's this is a bit more casual. You get a certain amount of lives to complete a dungeon and if you fail you only lose what you collected in that specific dungeon. No permadeath. So it's not one of those 5 minute RPG's. And even the 'extreme' dungeons are very doable and I'm not very experienced in this genre. Good gear can help a lot though and sometimes it takes a little luck to get the stuff you want, but it´s never too hard to come by.

But you should know that It's a bit unpolished. It's been in Early Access and my personal opinion is that it should have stayed there for a while. But I'm a bit of a perfectionist and Steam isn't when it comes to Early Access. Check out my first comment to see some more info about what´s not done yet.

It's not that it's hard to play, it's just awkward at times and it takes hours to get used to the quirks. Even though I find bugs every time I play i´ve not found anything game breaking. So even though it´s rough around the edges in my opinion it is very playable. After 7 hours of playing I actually hardly notice those quirks.

So I hope this won't keep you from buying the game. Again it's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of fun and very playable I just want to warn you to prevent possible frustration caused by finding out this game is not as far in development as you might expect.

(Oh yeah, one more thing. I'm pretty sure they didn't realise that they put nVidia 8000 in the system requirements. This suggests that an old 8300 should run the game fine, but I strongly recommend getting something better. I guess most pc's have better GPU's then that, but I thought I'd point it out to be sure. I've made them aware of this, but they might have missed this. They are usually very active on the forums though.)

(And anóther thing. The Xbox 360 controller is supported, but you can't properly aim anymore. Also you can't strafe. Playing with a controller is like playing Hammerwatch. Run away, turn around with same stick thén you can shoot the monsters that are chasing you. This isn't very hard it's just extremely awkward. And no strafing? Come on!)

Much better tho similar to mighty quest for epic loot. Realy cool adventure and campaign designer. Simple enough for my 8 year old to work with but good enough for me to make some cool adventures. For the price its a steal.

You know, telling your friends that you will go now and fight the dragon is not really advisable ;)Anyway, the game is really fun hehe

Honestly i was really angry at the beginning, not knowing that some stuff is really hard as well as the fact that my chosen character was just bad -.-But as soon as i got a deeper insight into the game i figuerd out, that it is a hell lot of fun.

The dragon? Ignore this dude he isnt worth your time.Appreciate the awesome content created by your fellow FTD players!Or just create awesome stuff on your own!

Well you gotta dungeon crawl and explore places and stuff, you can even invite 3 more players to wrek the enemies and solve riddles if there are any.Or just relax, while playing some really easy adventures, no need to take on the extreme stuff on the first day...

Yeah you got 4 classes, FIghter, Fire Wizard, Ice Wizard and Rogue.One for killing and tanking, one for burning and AOE damage, one for freezing and one for stealth and traps.

Then there is the ACK - Adventure Creation Kit -EVERYONE CAN USE IT!!!!!!!!!!111!!!!1Its easy and mostly self explantionary, even more complex events and triggers can be set up with little effort.Sure you are limited in tiles and content, but THINK CREATIVELY!!!!If you do, you can create awesome adventures, which will be loved and admired by those who play them!

Game visuals are all blocky and stuff, but it runs even on pretty old and on weak machines.Unlike some other blocky games, this one got actually some curves hehe

If you think you cant be a good adventure dev, just look at me.I never thought i would get better than a 3k+ devrank but now i am @ 129 devrank o.OYou just need to be CREATIVE and release well thought and balanced adventures. Not just mass produce overstuffed loot&xp farm levels...Be careful tho, the community can report your stuff and the game devs will check your creations... and maybe ban it and block you from further publishing anything!

Now buy the game, rock the ACK and round up some friends to beat all the adventures!

I really want to like this game. An instance-based multiplayer hack and slash with a built-in level editor and distributor is a great idea. That aspect of this game is done quite well. Unfortunately as of right now, the rest of the game itself is not. Character stats and mechanics aren't explained, and there is almost no depth to character development. Itemization is poor. Combat doesn't flow particularly well. Controls are iffy. The net result is a treadmill game with no story and no interesting rewards.

Fight the Dragon is a Arpg-style game that takes elements from games in the Diablo or Torchlight series, and mixes them up with a bit of Little Big Planet as well as Minecraft.

I've been playing arpg's of one sort or the other for many years-since the debut of the first Diablo game back in 1996 in fact. I've played almost every single game in the arpg genre. While Fight the Dragon isn't exactly like a traditional arpg due to its incorporation of things like puzzles and its lack of a main storyline I feel it more than makes up for it in its replay value as well as its customisability.

It all starts with their Adventure Creation Kit. This is a simple to learn editor that allows players to create and share their own adventures. Players can also share their adventures or campaigns online. The game has Steam workshop integration. You can subscribe to custom character modifications that let you change your characters look OR you can share your own creations with others. Adventures (as well as gameplay) are also cross-platform.

This game has a ton of replay value. There are over 3k player-made adventures, and more are added all the time. There's also four player co-op via internet OR LAN, and two player local co-op! Between single player content and multiplayer it means way more than your moneys worth. There are features that haven't been implemented yet. Money has no use aside from the games 'loot sacrifice' system. Every player gets a loot shrine. They can add excess loot to get donation tiers.

When you've donated enough items to reach the next tier you get to choose a random item of rare or better quality. It means your chances of getting something decent are good whether you accomplish an adventure or not. This game is challenging! It has easy maps but the real fun starts on medium. Maps aren't just about killing monsters. There are puzzles to solve as well. It means that no matter how many times you play the game there's always a new problem to solve which means less chance of losing interest.

I think this game is worth the low price they're charging for it ($14.99, currently on sale (as of 12-10-14) for $11.99), and the developers are constantly adding great new features to it. I think this is a solid buy for any arpg fan or for anyone who loves a good hack and slash dungeon crawling adventure.

Disclaimer: I'm not terribly far into the game, nor do I love ARPGs as a genre. I was gifted this game by a friend so we'd have a game to play as a group, and as a result my experience is solely low-levels with 4 players. If we delve further into it and my opinion changes, I'll modify this review to reflect it.

This game has a lot going for it. It has a bunch of small features that really improve the quality of life of the game, things I would have loved to see in other ARPGs. The amount of content being created for the game is awesome to see, and the loot system is pretty well done. That being said, I can't help but feel they really dropped the ball on combat and movement.

Pros:The loot system in the game is fairly well done. Judging by a few of the items I saw, some late game items will modify playstyles significantly enough to justify tags such as legendary. I love that you have a reason to pick up all your trash. The loot alter is a fantastic way to deal with that, although I'm not sure what else gold is used for, and as a result it feels tacked on as a system for getting trash loot without actually picking it up. It's certainly convenient but feels underwhelming as a whole. I'm not sure how I feel about Dragon Rings, but it's not a bad idea per se.

One of the best features of this game is the fact that the community creates content. To be honest not a ton of it wowed me, but there was quite a bit of it that was well done and as a result each run felt much better than a standard randomly generated run would.

Cons:The game features an incredibly simplified combat system that gets repetitive, fast. It's not an issue by itself, but when coupled by the sliding, non-grounded movement the game just feels very poorly made from a design standpoint. It makes the game feel a bit fast and frantic, with almost no tactics involved. When you throw in a few more players it becomes awful trying to navigate through small areas due to player collision, which simply does not work in a game like this in my opinion. I can only assume most dungeons are designed for one player.

On a similar note, the game's difficulty does not scale well at all in 4 player groups. We were picking "extreme" difficulty missions every time and I don't think any of us ever took much damage. The only deaths we had were when we had to commit suicide because we jumped into a part of a dungeon we weren't suppose to be at yet and couldn't progress, or we knocked each other off of terrain from collision due to latency issues. It also doesn't seem like there's a lot of actual content in world building. Perhaps some content is level-gated, but we were seeing the exact same sets of environments, enemies, traps, and levers the entire time. If the community is able to bring in new art assets to worlds, this will likely be a non-issue, but the core game feels lacking in diversity.

Despite the name "Fight the Dragon" along with a tag for mutliplayer, you cannot fight the dragon with friends. It's just your standard ARPG run around getting loot game with no real bosses (at least that we've run into), which gets a bit boring. (to me at least, some people love that as a core)

tl;dr - Fight the Dragon has a great core idea, and I'm sure a ton of people will love it. I just can't help but feel the simplicity of the combat system mixed with the weird floating/gliding movement is holding it back from being an actual great game.

Best thing about this game is the map editor. Build your own little adventure from scratch with terrain, objects, npc's and enemies. Use triggers and logic blocks to create events, like spawning enemies and triggers to open gates. After finishing your map you can publish it to make it available for all to play. 4/5

i only have a couple of hours playing with this so far, but as a gamer, and as a programmer, the brilliance of this whole system just jumps out at you.

first, the game engine seems awesome. the art style and level "building blocks" are pleasant, fun and well ... RPG'ish.

the mechanics of melee attacks, mana/rage attacks, and movement seem like that perfect balance, so that you've got options and growth in what your character can do, but you don't have an overwhelming number of things that you can do that clutter controls and make gameplay fiddly.

the comparisons are to Torchlight II, and that is a great comparison, a fair comparison, and a compliment to both games.

once you start playing, if you have a mind and disposition for these things, you instantly recognize how the engine and the level editor are truly going to be best friends, and how creating levels for the engine is going to be intuitve and awesome for a fan with that creative bent.

the browsing of fan content, and integrating that content into a given users play experience (the workshop/level browser) looks and feels like it could be awesome and literally a game changer for games using distributions systems like steam.

it'll be interesting to see if the community driven content mechanic is able to seperate the wheat from the chaff so that players can get access to "good" levels, and robust, connected experiences.

the content browser supports a number of filters that give some pretty good control to the consumer for finding the content from the community that meets good criteria, such as 'popular' and 'by a given author'.

the engine and level development tools are designed to favor small experiences, which will make it interesting to see how larger experiences are serialized by level developers.

with my limited gameplay experience so far, i have nothing bad to say about the engine ... i _really_ like how it plays, and i like the "art" and look and feel so far.

the developer is taking a huge chance that the "community" is going to create good quality content that is going to make their game worth playing, vs. bad content making the game "suck".

i'm a little worried about that part, but a) it's too early to tell, and b) i would imagine, if the developers are smart, that they might curate or produce enough of the content at some point, that the game could be played with _just_ that curated content and be complete and good.

Fight The Dragon is, in its current form, very worth the money in my opinion. The level editor is fairly straightforward, and very nicely integrated in to the game. Because of the level editor, content never dries out, so there is always a new level to play. There will be the occasional bad level of course, because of the nature of user generated content, but even those can at least be enjoyed with good enough company.

I would not recommend this game as strongly if you are not able to convince some of your friends to play it with you too, since that is where a lot of the fun comes from, but it is still enjoyable solo.

The game is not without flaws, and in a lot of ways does kind of feel like it... hasn't REALLY left early access yet, despite recently transitioning to full release. But most of the issues at the moment aren't deal breakers (things like some equipment affixes not scaling well beyond the early levels), and the developers are still working on the game actively and are very interactive with the community, so I am not really worried about the issues all in all.

Fight The DragonThe game play is pretty fluent and so are the animations.Some might call this a typical hack n' slash, and maybe I would agree... And that's not a bad thing at all. The whole game feel like a big love letter to the genre.You start out in your hub area, in which you create a new character and customize him/her (yes..there is a female avatar too).You can also use the ACK (the in game level editor) which will let you make small to mediumstories - Standalone adventures or whole campaigns, consisting of more adventures.This opens up a large community of player created content.Two adventures in, the game opens up for the loot shrine, and man is that good!!Besides the chest functionality we all know and love, the shrine offers something more...You go on the adventures and pick up loot, then sell all your junk loot to the shrine, whichwill fill up a bar. This will earn you four different tiers - Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum.Pick a tier and fill the shrine till you're there. Then chose one of three items or perks.The better the tier, the better the reward.Three adventures in, the game opens up the dragon mentioned in the title.This dragon has a ton of HP and it is going to take you a lot of tries to kill.Luckily, the dragon's HP is persistent, so you are going to shave it down little after little.Great game!